
DROBO 2.0
After almost two month now I want to give a short overview about the ‘new’ DROBO 2.0 box.
Well – it’s a up and down… with more ups, I think 😉
I found several problems on using / setting up the Drobo and some (one) of them are showstoppers.
First of all – here’s my installation in detail:
DROBO 2.0 USB/Firewire, Airport Extreme, MacBook Pro and Sony Vaio
1 – The standby-issue
I thought that it is possible to connect the Drobo to the Apple Airport Extreme via USB 2.0 as external Disk. The Airport is able to host HDDs connected as Airdisk and share them over the network so that every linked computer would be able to connect.
Well, it IS possible to connect the Drobo to the Airport… BUT
The problem is very simple – connecting the Drobo to the Airport will prevent the Drobo from going into standby mode. That results in a really noisy black box. Because the Drobo is situated right under my flat-TV that is absolutely unacceptable. And – of course – there’s also the point that it will consume much more power than being in standby…

Drobo-Share
The question here is now if the DROBO SHARE component would resolve that issue…
Anyone out there having tested it? In combination with the Airport Extreme?
How did I resolve the problem?
Also very simple – I disconnect the Drobo every time I do not use it from the Airport Extreme – within seconds the Drobo switches into standby-mode and is much quieter from this point on. But it is not completly quiet – sometimes the Drobo comes alife by powering up the fan – so if you want it really to be quiet you will have to disconnet the Drobo also from the powerline.
2 – The TimeMachine issue
There’s not really a issue here. Not on the Drobo side, but on the TimeMachine.
TimeMachine always is using the whole HDD capacity you are connecting to the Mac you are using. So if you don’t like to fill up the whole drive with TM backups you will have to create a separate partition to be used for backing up your Mac via TM.
It’s working great and no problems are found so far – I think there will be no issues because both – Apple and Data Robotics – are reffering this functionality. At the Data Robotics you can find a detailed description how to setup an additional partition on the Drobo.
Update, 02-02-2009:
There is a DroboApp called ‘Time Tamer‘ available to limit the appetite of TimeMachine by using a Drobo. I thought that DroboApps only work in combination with DroboShare… but some of them are also working ‘normal’ via AppleScript (Automator in detail)… seems to be worth to check it out…